Macdonald - Pumpkins & squashes: recipes, propagation and decoration

Pumpkins and squashes, and their close relatives, gourds, have an ancient history evidence has been found of their use almost 10,000 years ago. Gourds, with shapes ranging from more or less spherical to bottle-shaped, are still hollowed out and used as storage pots for grains, nuts or liquids (not to mention penis protectors, although where the larger gourds are used, one wonders if a certain amount of boasting is involved.)

They make spoons, and scooping implements. I still use a half-calabash which was given to me by a Guyanan neighbour when I lived in a flat with an enormous cast-iron bath but no method of heating enough water to fill it. With a bucket full of hot water, I could stand in the bath and scoop calabashfuls of water over myself a very effective way of showering. It gets used for hair-washing now, but Im still very grateful to Joyce for the gift.

They have been, and still are used as cricket cages, breeding boxes for canaries, pipes for tobacco and (whisper it) marijuana, fishing floats, ceremonial masks, and all sorts of musical instruments, from maracas and drums to flutes for snake charming.

Gourds (Lagenaria) evolved throughout the tropical world, but the edible summer and winter squashes and pumpkins are New World natives, originating from South and Central America. You occasionally come across a writer who states that pumpkins were used by the Romans, but this is an error due to the fact that the word pumpkin is derived via the 17th Century word pompion from the Greek word for melon pepon, which was also used by Romans.

Brought by European explorers from the Americas, where they are traditionally eaten mainly in soups and stews (and where the seeds were used as a tasty way of getting rid of intestinal worms), they became incorporated into the cooking of their new homes. In Italy pumpkins are used in risotto or to stuff pasta, in France the courgette was traditionally preferred, in England it was the mature version of courgette, the marrow that caught the gardeners imagination.

European settlers in North America were given pumpkins by the native Americans, together with other local foods including turkeys and cranberries. Their gratitude for these gifts, which helped them survive their first year, is celebrated each November in the traditional Thanksgiving dinner of roast turkey and pumpkin pie.

Americans have, for many years, also enjoyed the more complex taste of the winter squashes, but it is only in the last few years that these have been freely available in Europe. In France, pumpkins used to be thought of as cattle food, but they, and winter squashes, are enjoying a surge of popularity.

Few people realise that the fairy story Cinderella originated in France, where the heroine is called Cendrillon. Quite what made someone first think that a pumpkin could be used as a coach I dont know, although anyone who has grown a big pumpkin is aware of the almost magical way it expands from day to day. Ive always loved that story, and when I acquired my first Mercedes car (a very old one, and quite cheap) I called it Pumpkin as a propitiation to the gods, in case it turned into a pumpkin overnight. Ive had a sequence of them since, and theyve all been called Pumpkin. It obviously works, because none of them has turned back, even if I am out in them after midnight!